Diversity Is Not Our Strength

The Left has drilled the immigrant “melting pot” fantasy into our heads for so many years that most people dare not question it. They should. The United States was founded by Anglo-Saxon Protestants from Western Europe. For most of America’s history, “immigrants” meant descendants of British Common Law raised in our Western Judeo-Christian ethic. Our culture, our traditions, and most importantly, our astronomical living standards are a direct result of that particular heritage. Don’t think so? What if our founding fathers were Aztec? Or Yoruba? What prosperity did those cultures leave to their descendants? Our Republic is rich because, despite its flaws, it was founded on a set of objectively better ideas. Immigrants to the United States do not make us wealthier by virtue of looking “diverse.” Quite the opposite. They make us and themselves wealthier when they assimilate to our Western tradition – when they become “one of us.” Before the rise of fraudulent victim advocacy organizations and our massive welfare state, American immigrants that couldn’t meet our standards or disliked our values would simply pack their bags and go home. This was a delicate and humane screening test for prospective migrants. No need for reams of paperwork, a massive immigration bureaucracy, or an army of ICE agents.

Yet, where would the political Left be if they weren’t “fixing” something? Open borders are the Left’s answer to Protestant America’s rejection of socialism. Marxists suffered a humiliating intellectual defeat during the post-war era and were badly in need of new voters. Americans peeked over the Iron curtain and gasped in horror at the mountain of dead bodies piled up across socialist Europe and Asia. For at least a part of American history, Communism became a bad word. Marxist academics muttered a collective “whoops” and retreated from the battlefield of ideas. They got to work on a new scheme for pushing big government socialism on Americans. If they couldn’t convince Protestant Christians to favor statism, why not just import statists? Enter Ted Kennedy’s 1965 immigration bill which not only limited immigration from Western Europe but also opened America’s front door to